


if my heart is a grenade

by blackwood (transjon)



Category: The Magnus Archives (Podcast)
Genre: Anxiety, Aspec Martin Blackwood, Canon Asexual Character, Communication, M/M, between 162 and 163, kiss averse character, lack of communication leads to misunderstandings and assumptions, overall the tone is fluffy and sweet
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-04-26
Updated: 2020-04-26
Packaged: 2021-03-01 17:15:08
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,960
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/23860660
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/transjon/pseuds/blackwood
Summary: It’s Jon in his arms. It’s Jon’s scarred arms under his fingertips. It’s Jon’s lips on his neck, and his hands in Martin’s, and sometimes his feet in Martin’s lap. It’s his fingers in Martin’s hair, twirling his curls around his long, elegant fingers. Martin sits and feels his fingers and thinks about him playing the piano, as a kid, as a teenager. He wonders if he could still play, if he had a piano here. If he’d play for him, in front of the fireplace, the music filling the little cabin, bouncing off the walls. Would he play with his eyes closed? Would he just know how to move his hands, his fingers, his wrists?Piano or not – it’s good. It’s so good. Jon is so much better like this than Martin had ever imagined. It’s –It’s scary.
Relationships: Martin Blackwood/Jonathan Sims
Comments: 23
Kudos: 227
Collections: Aspec Martin Blackwood Week





	if my heart is a grenade

**Author's Note:**

> this doesnt really make much sense but i typed it up in less than an hour so i think that makes it all okay! 
> 
> some general notes:  
> \- kissing averse jonmartin  
> \- no internalized -phobia per se, but there is again anxiety/distress/internalized normativity thoughts about it
> 
> title is from rat a tat by fob!

The night before they leave Jon nestles close enough that some of his curls get into Martin’s mouth.

“Are you scared?” he asks softly.

“No,” Martin says, and tries to discreetly spit out the stray hairs without making too much noise or otherwise make it too obvious that he’s doing it. 

Jon, seemingly not noticing, is quiet for a bit. “Me neither.”

He feels warm under the blanket, and with Jon partially in his lap he feels even warmer. He thinks it should probably be uncomfortable, to some extent at least, but as it is all he feels is affection. He feels warm on the inside, even more so than on the outside. 

“You don’t have to lie,” Martin says. It radiates off of him. He’s been _saying_ it, for God’s sake, for weeks now, how he’s scared and worried and afraid and whatever other synonyms he has in store – vexed and haunted, whatever. Scared. Afraid. Martin had gathered supplies and waited patiently for him to no longer feel immobilized by that fear. 

Jon’s head moves a little bit. The top of it knocks against Martin’s chin, and Martin tilts his chin up to make room. “I’m not,” he says, and then he sighs. “It’s complicated. I suppose you could say that, technically, if you want to mince words, but it’s more that I’m –” he hesitates, “ I feel uncertain. I don’t know if this is a good idea, and the possibility of us leaving making things worse is… Suboptimal, and I don’t want to cause any more harm. But staying here – I think that’d be worse. Does that make sense?”

“Yes,” Martin says. His arms move without his input to wrap tighter around Jon’s shoulders. He sighs heavily, cheek rubbing against Martin’s chest. Like a cat, Martin thinks, he’s like a cat. He thinks about moving one hand up to scratch behind his ears, gentle and tender and soft and light. 

“You don’t have to lie, either,” Jon says. There’s a smile in his voice. Martin smiles as well. It’s good. It’s nice. He thinks about the way his smile pulls his cheeks up. He thinks about his dimples. He thinks about the way he smiles with just the barest hint of teeth. 

“What? You can just tell if I’m lying now?” Martin asks, not too serious about it. 

“Can you?” Jon asks back. 

“No,” Martin lies. 

“Right,” Jon says, and presses a kiss to the exposed skin of Martin’s neck. “I thought we weren’t lying to each other!”

Martin’s smile widens. “I never said that!”

And – Martin guesses – this is just their new normal, now. Pressing kisses to each other’s skin, sitting side by side. Or Jon in his lap, or lying on the bed, not sleeping, not awake. Catching each other on little lies and saying so. Catching each other falling into bad habits or patterns and calling each other out. It’s nice. 

It’s Jon in his arms. It’s Jon’s scarred arms under his fingertips. It’s Jon’s lips on his neck, and his hands in Martin’s, and sometimes his feet in Martin’s lap. It’s his fingers in Martin’s hair, twirling his curls around his long, elegant fingers. Martin sits and feels his fingers and thinks about him playing the piano, as a kid, as a teenager. He wonders if he could still play, if he had a piano here. If he’d play for him, in front of the fireplace, the music filling the little cabin, bouncing off the walls. Would he play with his eyes closed? Would he just know how to move his hands, his fingers, his wrists? 

Piano or not – it’s good. It’s so good. Jon is so much better like this than Martin had ever imagined. It’s –

It’s scary. 

Jon climbing into bed and Martin not knowing what to do. If he’s supposed to do something. Is he supposed to do something? He says “hi” and Jon leans towards him and kisses him on the cheek, right by his mouth, and says “hi,” and then he pulls back away. Is that supposed to happen? Jon sits in his lap and nuzzles his face against his chest and kisses through the fabric. It’s been weeks. Should something else be happening? Should there be more?

Jon shifts in his arms, a subtle, quiet thing. 

“Do you love me?” he asks, quietly. Jon’s head moves again, then, fast and jerky, and Martin just barely manages to move his own out of the way before it collides with Martin’s chin again.

“Martin,” Jon says, bewildered, “I tell you I love you all the time!” 

“Right,” Martin says, hurriedly. “You do.”

“I thought you could tell when I’m lying,” Jon says. There’s no accusation in his voice. Martin thinks he might be trying to sound playful in a half-hearted way. Like he’s not sure if it’s appropriate or not. Like he’s split between playful and concerned. 

“Right. But I didn’t say I can tell when you’re telling the truth.”

Jon’s eyebrows furrow. “That doesn’t make sense. They’re mutually inclusive. If you can tell when I’m lying you can tell when I’m telling the truth. If I’m not lying then I must be telling the truth. Simple process of elimination.”

Martin looks away. “I suppose.” A tear threatens to fall out of his eye. He shakes his head gently to dislodge it. 

“ _Martin_.”

“Sorry,” he says. He unwraps one arm from around Jon to wipe the tear away. “I don’t know what’s wrong. I think I might be scared, after all.”

“No, you’re not,” Jon says softly. 

“No,” Martin agrees, “I’m not.” 

Not of the trip, at least. He guesses he’ll re-evaluate whether or not he’s scared of what they’ll find at the end of it when they get to it.

“Please talk to me,” Jon says, and his voice is so soft – 

“Can’t you just _Know_?” Martin asks. “Isn’t that a whole thing? You can just Know things, now, right?”

“Right,” Jon agrees, voice dripping with reluctance and disdain, “I can, yes.”

Martin thinks about –

Jon in his arms, kissing his cheeks, one after the other. Martin kissing him back, one cheek, then the next. When he pulls back Jon stays still with his eyes closed, a little blissed out smile carving space for itself on his face, and Martin thinks about love in the abstract, and then love as a concrete, tangible thing, and then love in the present, and then love in the active. Love as a noun. Love as a verb. He thinks about love as an action, and Jon opens his eyes, just a little bit, and then he blinks, slow and languid, head swaying a little with the motion of it. 

Like a cat. He thinks about this. He closes his eyes, and nods quietly.

“I think it might be better if you just told me,” Jon says gently. “Just because I can know things doesn’t mean I’ll understand.”

Martin nods, quick, jerky. “Ah. Right. Sees all, understands none…?”

“Something like that,” Jon says, and then after a second of silence, “not just because of that, though. I just think – I think I want to hear these things from _you_.”

“I don’t want to say it,” Martin says, and his breath hitches on the last syllable. “I’ll cry. I don’t want to say it.”

He could wait. He could cry it out, and let Jon hold him through it, and then just tell him, just say all of these ridiculous things pressing down on the bottom of his skull like something tangible and heavy, he _could_ , and Jon would like that more – it’d be fair. It’d be nicer.

But Jon just knowing would be – it’d be painless. It’d be easy. Like pulling off a bandaid. Gauze on an open wound. 

“Alright,” Jon says. “What should I – what’s wrong? Is that what I should –”

“I don’t know,” Martin says, helpless. “I just feel like – like I don’t know anything. I feel like there’s something I’m missing. You say you love me, and I believe you, I do! It’s just –”

There’s a brief surge of static, and Jon’s eyes fill with something unreadable but intense, and Martin feels like someone’s cut strings holding him up. He’s overheating, now, almost definitely. 

“I didn’t know you wanted me to –” Jon’s voice falters, “I didn’t realize you wanted me to kiss you on the mouth!” 

Martin whimpers quietly. “I don’t – I don’t know if I want you to, I just – I thought that’s what people did when they –” He falters. “I thought you would want to do that. I thought it’s what people did.”

Jon looks at him, then, long and quiet and dark and observing. Cataloguing. “Do you _want_ me to kiss you?” he asks. 

And Martin – he doesn’t know. In all of the relationships he’s been in, before, there’d always been kissing – closed, chaste kisses; wet, messy kisses; making out, all that, and it’s –

“No,” he says, and then when Jon doesn’t say anything he hurries to add, “not because I don’t love you! Um. I just. I don’t know.” He wants to put his face in his hands. “I don’t know what’s wrong with me right now. I don’t think so. Y’know, in my last relationship he really liked kissing, and I thought it was kind of, not gross, exactly, but more so – inconvenient? I didn’t hate it! Just, it kept happening. And I just thought other people wanted to do that. Everyone I’ve dated before has always wanted to. I figured – I figured everyone wants to do that.”

“Not you,” Jon says gently. 

“Not me, I suppose,” Martin agrees, shoulders slumping. 

“And not me,” Jon says, and then he buries his face in Martin’s chest. Out of shyness or shame or embarrassment or just a desire for physical contact again, Martin doesn’t know. His hand finds its way to the back of Jon’s neck to hold him there regardless.

“Wait, what?”

“I don’t really enjoy it either,” he says. It’s a little muffled. “I’ll do it, if you’d like, but as you’ve um, noticed, I don’t really enjoy or desire it enough to seek it out.”

Martin nods mutely, and then after a second, “oh.”

“Yeah.”

“I thought –”

“I’m sorry,” Jon says, and pulls his face away from Martin’s chest. “I really thought you’d just kiss me if you wanted it. I didn’t realize you were waiting for _me_ to. I thought you just – ah, didn’t want to, and that’s why.”

“Right,” says Martin. He feels both very small and very silly at the same time. “That makes sense.”

Jon cranes his neck to reach his jaw, and kisses him right there. “Are you okay? Do you need me to – to tell you, again? Do you believe me?”

Martin closes his eyes tight and breathes. In. Out. His head is buzzing. He thinks about Jon nestling himself into Martin’s lap with such care and precision it’d almost knocked the breath out of him with the scientific accuracy of it all, legs and arms and spine folding and bending and straightening to take up just the right amount of space, to distribute his weight just right, to make himself as comfortable as possible. He thinks about Jon with his huge, dark eyes. He thinks about his hair in his mouth. He traces the curve and angle of Jon’s jaw with a fingertip and when Jon shivers gently he presses a possessive kiss on the top of his head. 

“Tell me,” he says, voice shaking. “Please.”

“I love you,” Jon says immediately. “I love you. I love you –”

And Martin thinks about the rucksacks in the doorway, waiting by their shoes, stuffed full of rope and supplies and anything else he’d thought to bring, and he believes him.

**Author's Note:**

> blqckwoods on tumblr!


End file.
